


Mortis as a Looking Glass

by Merfilly



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Mortis (Star Wars), Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-28 23:12:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15717048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: A different set of visions, encounters, and realizations lead the Trinity down a new road.





	Mortis as a Looking Glass

The world twisted, and the air changed, but still she wandered, never finding Anakin, never finding Obi-Wan. Somehow, she only ever felt hunger at the bearable level, finding small prey and water in intervals that kept her alive. Sometimes, she slept, but the nightmares drove her to waking so quickly.

Sometimes she talked to herself, and was answered by a woman that was cynical and bitter that she did not much care for.

Sometimes a convor watched over her.

Through it all, though time had lost all meaning, Ahsoka kept faith that she would find her masters, or they would find her.

* * *

He was going mad. Of that, Anakin had no doubt, even as he looked at the ethereal beauty now walking beside him on one side, the snarling gargoyle on his other.

"I. Want. My. Padawan. And Obi-Wan, but I know he can take care of himself!" Anakin snapped at them both.

"If you knew she could take care of herself, and would stand by you — "

"Sister, you are overstepping!"

"Hush, brother, or I will tell father of your own rule-breaking," she replied.

Anakin ignored both of them, even as he thought about her words. It was his job to worry over his padawan. He always would…

…was this what Obi-Wan felt?

* * *

How many people could this place show him? How could even Cerasi, the child that had first opened his thoughts to something beyond the Code, when he was but a child himself, appear to tempt him?

It took Qui-Gon, though, to break his feeling of being trapped in the grief and despair. Siri talking to him in sharp, angry words was not so unusual, and of course Bruck had been hateful, but his master would not have been like… that.

For all that they had struggled in their association, for as sharp as Qui-Gon could be, Obi-Wan knew one thing.

Qui-Gon always gave him credit for trying. And this task, the completion of Anakin's training, had been thrust on him by Qui-Gon himself.

"My master would have given me credit for trying, and helped me find the right path," Obi-Wan said, eyes narrowing. "You are no spirit of his, only a simulacrum drawn from my memories and fears!"

The sudden silence around him was relief, and then a resurgence of his drive to find Anakin, to find Ahsoka. They were likely in as much danger from their fears.

* * *

Her lekku were definitely longer. Ahsoka looked at the reflection in the crystal she had found, and reached back to touch the central lek, confirming it had lengthened as well. Her face looked thinner, and she didn't think her montrals were budding out the way her vision-self's did.

"You choose to remain at his side, and you have no future," that one said again, harping as ever against Anakin's place in her life.

Ahsoka looked at the bitter woman, and smiled, fangs bared, for it was a threat display, not joy. "I have no future? Or you don't?"

The apparition vanished, and Ahsoka touched the crystal, seeking the resonance of the Force within it, using that to seek those who reflected the Force back.

Above her, a convor perched and crooned.

* * *

Anakin stared down the gargoyle that had replaced his most recent vision of Padmé screaming and dying with his name on her lips.

"Not real." Stubborn certainty reinforced the words, while the gargoyle all but smirked.

"It is truth," the mystical creature said, before transforming into a massive krayt, and the air grew thick with the winds and sands of Tatooine. "You will be the destroyer of all, Chosen One. But…" and the vista vanished back into an arena of polished stone soaked by epochs of bloodshed, "I could change it all, if you just accept my aid."

"Not falling for it. You're keeping me from my friends," Anakin growled.

"If I were you, I'd be more careful in who you give that name to," the other, now a man-shaped being with red-on-white markings on his face said before vanishing.

* * *

The glow of lava, the smell of noxious gasses, and the heart-hammering fear in his soul brought Obi-Wan up out of his nightmare. Or was this one a Vision? He'd had several of each in the days that he'd wandered, trying desperately to seek his missing ones.

"Can you protect them even if you find them? Protect them from themselves?"

"I told you before, old one," Obi-Wan said without even turning to see the ancient being that had wandered in and out of his wandering, "that Anakin and I are a team, solidly, and that we are guiding Ahsoka as best we can."

"But will it be enough?"

* * *

Ahsoka ignored the older-self, ignored that her lekku were almost the same length in front and back, but not as long as the old bitter version of herself. Instead, she focused on the convor, the creature that was almost always near, always trilling at her when she told off the old-her.

"Why am I here? What is it that you and the other one want?"

The convor launched down, and settled on a rock to be eye-level with Ahsoka.

~You are the first to ask.~

"Because you're interfering directly with her," the bitter apparition said, causing Ahsoka to hold a hand up, the Force pooling around her in threat of a destructive flick of energy.

It made the older Ahsoka-vision laugh. "Already half-mine."

~They are all halves,~ the convor chided in their minds.

"You can't have three halves," Ahsoka observed, and the convor chirred at her, as if she had glimpsed something important.

* * *

The visions that had wracked him were reminding him of Tatooine, of his loss of control, of the deep cold and blackness taking all of who he was and driving him into the frenzy of murder.

Yet, that was the very problem, wasn't it? Anakin saw himself destroying everything, not just the bad things, but all he held dear in those visions. He was a tool of destruction, meant to bring balance in the harshest way possible.

After all, if he destroyed both the Light and the Dark, everything would be even.

Could he make Obi-Wan understand that?

Would Ahsoka forgive him if he took that path?

"Shut up," he growled to the voice that whispered the road ahead, rejecting it all, rejecting the idea of a preset path he had to follow. "And give me back my master and padawan!" he yelled into the void left by banished visions.

* * *

"We need each other," Obi-Wan said flatly, the next time the old man walked beside him. "Keeping us separated is not good for anyone."

"Yet, if you have been thorough in what you taught, should they not stand alone solidly?"

"No being is meant to be trapped alone! No being stands alone in the galaxy without paying a price in sanity!"

The old man stopped, and politely, so did the angry Jedi.

"And how does that fit with your Order's concepts of a Code?"

The anger left Obi-Wan, as he saw the truth at last.

* * *

Three doors opened onto the central room, a giant altar at the center, a blade in plain sight upon it.

Three Chosen stepped out, the blade singing to each with a different promise.

A gargoyle and a convor-winged great cat watched from above, an old man from the side, as the three took stock of one another, seeing different truths and fictions.

Anakin saw the Order in all of its inflexible paths on one side, and the burdens placed on him at the other.

Obi-Wan saw the anchor that kept him living past the loss of his soul, and the bright potential of a future on either side of him.

Ahsoka saw the blaze of loss in one and the struggle of darkness in the other.

The blade told them each that sacrifice could make all things right, if they but chose, so that there would only be two.

"There can only be two halves," Ahsoka said aloud. "But if each of us give up a piece of ourselves, we make room for us all."

"We need one another, and anything that drives us to be apart is wrong," Obi-Wan said with confidence.

Anakin listened, heard the words, and knew deep inside of himself that both were right. The future…

…wavered? As he contemplated giving a piece of himself to each of them, of letting both of them truly in, the future lightened away from the smoke and ash he had been tasting for days.

"Can you both do that, when I am a monster?" he asked, sacrificing his mask to start the path.

"I feel your pain, Master, but it is not that of a monster, and doesn't have to be. I choose you, over everything else, if you will let me stand with you," Ahsoka said.

"My padawan is no monster, unless he was led to that path by his teacher," Obi-Wan said firmly. "I ask that you give me the chance to set right all I have failed you in."

The gargoyle tried to lunge toward them, tried to grip the most powerful of the trio, but before the ancient being or the ethereal winged cat could react, Anakin threw his hand up, holding the Son at bay.

"We're done here," Anakin said, before turning both of his hands out, reaching for the pair that would be his anchors in the light, while he tempered them with his darkness.

The room, the very world, trembled, breaking apart around them, even as the old man smiled.

This was not the path he'd brought them here for, but maybe it would be better?

* * *

Obi-Wan groaned as he sat up, dust flaking away from his clothing and skin. He immediately reached over and found Anakin's leather-gloved mechanical hand. He pushed to sitting… and could see their padawan, her clothing long since recrafted with ingenuity and animal hides to suit her height and build.

"How in the galaxy are we going to explain our padawan being older?" he asked in a conversational voice, making Anakin sit up and look over.

"Snips?"

"Not so loud," she said, sitting up more slowly, and looking at both of them. "I'm not the only one. I think I like the white coming in, Master Obi-Wan," she said impishly. She then eyed her own master, and smiled gently, before moving into his space, taking his other hand. "You just look a little more mature."

"Not sure I like you being as tall as me," Anakin grumped, but he held both hands, not letting go. He couldn't, and he knew that now.

"Let's hope — " Obi-Wan began.

"Come in, generals!" Rex's distressed voice said.

"— that it hasn't been as long for the others," Obi-Wan finished before answering.

The future felt freer than it had in a while, but just how things would go remained to be seen.

**Author's Note:**

> Different amounts of time passed for each of them. Obi-Wan is only barely turning white, so not even as old as he appeared in Rebels. Ahsoka is roughly half-way to where she was in Rebels. Anakin... is more Padmé's age now.
> 
> I have no idea how this plays out; I just had the thought of Ahsoka aging on Mortis due to being trapped in a different timestream for a while. This also did not go in the direction I thought it would, when I began writing, so.


End file.
